What is the Nature of your Universe? Does mine exclude yours? Or, do I exist because of you? If this is such, I thank you very much.
How can I express my gratitude and appreciation for being cast in the shadow of your consciousness so that I might have my own little niche of existence? I bow down and am not worthy. Perhaps I can offer up this, a bit of information. I tend to think of it as a gift, and I hope that you lean toward this tendency as well. So here we go.
Binaural beats. Brainwave entrainment.
Yes, imagine a train resting on its rails, a long train, a long time ago, smoke from its engine billowing up overhead. You are sitting on this train, in a train car coupled at its fore and aft couplings between other cars in this long train once upon a time in the world.
Presently that old engine ebbs forward, and its one coupling clanks against the coupling of the car behind it which resists the tug to go ahead. There is a long line of weight strung out in the other direction, a stretch of cars all connected at their couplings. But resistance is futile and time is on the engine’s side.
You sit and wait until the growing weight of the now surging forward movement catches up with you and you suddenly feel the tug, you sense if not hear the clank, and your car lurches with a slight press against your back from the seat you sit back on. You join the team of traveling train cars and roll off toward the future, eventually catching up to now. Or maybe you stay in the past, I don't know, but that's up to you. Anyway, I digress. Sorry. Bear with me.
Where was I? Right. Okay. Brainwave entrainment.
There is I suppose some controversy regarding brainwave entrainment, but as far as I am concerned, I'm sold on it. I do not believe the experience I encountered with binaural beats and brainwave manipulation was merely imagined. I trust this stuff, but there is subtlety involved with the effect of the beats, that's for sure.
So, I am going to forego with any hesitation in what I tell you about it. You need a pair of comfortable, convenient, good-quality stereo head/earphones. Computer or CD player, why bother with cassettes.
You will also need the CDs or sound files that hold the requisite pair of binaural beat instigating sound pulses, but more on that later. First, this is what you do and what happens.
Put on your headphones. Play the sound file or CD or whatever source you use to make the sound pulses enter your head independently of one another. There is one sound wave entering one ear and another one entering the ear that is left. Right? Still with me? This is assuming you have two ears located on opposite sides of your head, or heads as the case may be, and if you only have one ear, or head, I am sorry for your loss, and also happy you are not some mutant alien monster harboring evil designs against our planet. But I apologize for getting off track. It won't happen again. At least not very much.
So, getting back to binaural beats. A binaural beat is initiated once the effect of brainwave entrainment kicks in due to the influence of the two different sound pulses or waves bumping gently against the left hemisphere of your brain from your right ear and so on and so forth et cetera et cetera et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseam and I think you get the picture. But just to go over that again . . .
. . . in your left ear you hear, for example, a sound that rides a wave point of 450 hertz, or 450 beats/cycles per second. In the right ear you get a sound wave at 440 Hertz. There is now an imbalance of 10 Hz registering on the two hemispheres of your brain. And as measured by an EEG while entraining a binaural beat at that frequency of Alpha, 10 Hz becomes your dominant brainwave pattern. That extra serotonin sure comes in handy for jet lag. Or even for train lull.
When you are sleeping restfully, and your eyeballs are bouncing around behind their lids as if watching a three-ring circus from the front row under the big tent, when the dominant wave pattern of your brain is between about 4.1 and 7.9 Hz, you are in Theta, you are producing that healthy REM, you are dreaming. And your little mind factory is also pumping out some definitely advantageous neurochems guaranteed to slow down the aging process and enhance your sense of well-being, pleasure and delight. When you are well-rested from a good night's sleep chock-full of some cool mind candy, you feel the energy uplift and a keener focus, right?
Those times when you slip into dreamless slumber when the old soul vehicle is at its most relaxed, it's even better for you with more Theta waves taking over and your skull software generates programs full of, for example, melatonin.
This is just a part of what the binaural beat aural technology used to entrain brainwaves is all about, replicating the effects of various forms of sleep on the mind and body. If you wanted to, you could drive your dominant brainwave pattern way up high into extreme Beta and get all anxious and maybe feeling kinda weird, if you are into that.
In fact, when I was first looking into brainwave entrainment it eventually dawned on my horizon that binaural beat practitioners seem to fall into two distinct categories, experimental and developmental.
Those who use it to experiment with altered states of consciousness might have “presets” entitled “UFO contact”, “Crazydreams”, “Astral Projection Without Fail” and “Double Helixed Pyramid Travel to the Stars”, all of which can be found in the online archive after upgrading the shareware program BrainWave Generator. (My favourite is “Psychic Lucid Dreams”.) BWGers create their own binaural beat presets and then upload them into the BWG online library for all members to share.
But the granddaddy of binaural beat brainwave entrainment research and experimentation was the founder of the Monroe Institute, some guy named Monroe, go figure.
The Monroe Institute (http://www.monroeinstitute.com) headquarters at 365 Roberts Mountain Road in the burg of Faber in the state of Virginia, and I know even less about this guy named Roberts and his mountain than that guy named Monroe who must have been from Faber or something, but that doesn’t really matter, so try to stay focused here, okay.
In fact, read between the lines to find out what Wikipedia says about TMI as of this writing; and remember, concentrating does not mean furrowing your brow.
Line the First -- Start of Quote
The Monroe Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit education and research organization devoted to the exploration of human consciousness. Over the last 3 decades, many people have attended TMI’s residential programs, and/or used their trademark Hemi-Sync audio technology for various purposes, including meditation and lucid dreaming. TMI’s methodology does not contain bias towards any particular belief system, religion, or political or social stance.
TMI was founded by Robert Monroe after he started having what he called “out of body experiences.” It is comprised of several buildings on land owned by the Monroe famliy in Virginia, USA. One of its activities includes teaching various techniques, based on Hemi-Sync, in order to expand consciousness and explore areas of consciousness not normally available in the waking state.
A weekly newspaper reporter who visited the Monroe Institute said, “ . . . with a few exceptions, the only “normal” people with whom I could fully identify were the trainers, who seemed remarkably well-grounded for people whose day-to-day experiences include astral projection and disembodied spirits.”
After the first few days, the reporter wrote, “There is something significant being developed at the Institute. Whether it’s just a brilliant guided meditation (complete with trance-inducing stereoscopic sound) or a doorway to a world of spirit entities, I cannot say.”
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monroe_Institute)
Line the Second -- End of Quote
Now you may be led to ponder how is it that said reporter “cannot say” and if this is because the Monroe Institute threatened to withhold his (her?) binaural beat treat, the teat of the binaural beat so to speak, which could, one might conjecture, then lead to some sort of brainwave disentrainment, but the truth is that I cannot say, and not because I don’t know, which is also a truth, but because I previously loosely “promised” no longer to go astray in this piece of writing . . . whoah, that’s weird, my brow is furrowing. Time to plug the earphones back in.
Hey, I have just got to tell you, I really love BrainWave Generator’s “Psychic Lucid Dreams”.
But the Monroe Institue, yes the Monroe Institute. This non-profit org sells Hemi-Sync® CDs embedded with various “flavors”, some of which are the following, and I quote from the Hemi-Sync® CD jackets:
“Sensory: Seeing Improve and fine tune your eyesight. Sensory: Seeing teaches you a method you can use anywhere to sharpen your focus and enhance your sensitivity to light and movement. May also be used to ease eye strain, strengthen eye muscles, or help alleviate ongoing vision problems.”
“Heart: Repairs and Maintenance Improve the blood flow to your heart and enhance its functioning. Utilize the mind-body connection to increase the flexibility of blood vessels and strengthen the heart muscles to optimize the performance of this vital organ.”
And that’s pretty cool. Of course each of these CDs comes with disclaimer info such as “Do not drink and drive” -- wait, wrong disclaimer -- uh, yeah, here it is, “Do not listen while driving.” And then there’s this: “While many of our audio products contribute to wellness, they are not intended to replace medical diagnosis and treatment.”
So they get that stuff out of the way, “No animals were injured in the production of _____________”, etc., although it doesn’t actually indicate that. But check these two out –
“Mobius West Create the reality you desire. Maximize your achievements and/or establish new directions in your life. Use Mobius West to program change in your thoughts, feelings, or behavior and to alter mental, emotional, or physical patterns.”
And even more out there is –
“The ‘SO’ Chord The ‘SO’ Chord is one of many interpretations of the formative sound of Creation emerging from the ‘Void.’ [It has] an ideal sonic background to support experimental meditation . . . . Restore balance and harmony to your mind/body with this extraordinary meditative tool.”
Now if you, the reader, are still with me here, congratulations. And of course thank you for continuing to absorb my gift of info which I am unworthy of giving you, given how I am but a speck, a mere flicker of reality, wallowing in my niche of your greater consciousness and being, but be that as it may, the Hemi-Sync® approach to brainwave entrainment at TMI, located in the outlying environs of the corridors of federal power, is different than that of Bill Harris and Holo-Sync® at Centerpointe (http://www.centerpointe.com), found on a totally different planet, the Pacific Northwest. The Centerpointe website has a demo registration page whereby Bill and gang send you a demo CD and a bunch of “propaganda” that’s hard to ignore, so promising is it.
Be aware that both the NPO on the East Coast and the for-profit outfit on the West Coast charge a fiscal price for their binaural-beat instigating, brainwave-entraining CDs, but if you continue to stay with me I will eventually point you in the direction of a source by which you can create your own binaural beat presets, and no it is not the shareware offered by BrainWave Generator, although I cannot recommend “Psychic Lucid Dreams” enough.
No, I’m talking about open source freeware.
But first, an interlude. Boring history. Boring into your soul.
Remember, it’s only in your mind.
When first brought to my attention, that which implants the binaural beat was offered up as a remedy of hesitant sorts for an emotional affliction hampering one dear to my navel. Consequently, I became enamored of the investigation that issued forth.
Without further ado, getting straight to the point, avoiding all unnecessary intermittent delay, postponement and negligent spans of attention, this is that story.
Actually, never mind.
Here’s the freeware. (That’s better than some old story, isn’t it?)
Source Forge. This is the spot. But a more direct route is to google “Gnaural” and hit search. What you are looking for is called, at least by me, anyway, Gnaural Programmable Binaural Beat Generator. On the software itself there is a hyphen thrown into the mix, but I tend to do without that piece of punctuation when I type GPBBG in full. For now, we will keep the exact location of that piece a mystery, and if that thought gets you feeling all kind of antsy, bear in mind that GPBBG can take said anxiety away with an abundance of alpha, theta and delta.
Gnaural (How does one say that? Rrrrrrggggg…!) can in this manner be downloaded from www.sourceforge.com and then installed upon your computer. And you’re good to go.
Or course, it might be a good idea to find out how to program this baby for best results. There is a slight bump in the information highway regarding Gnaural if you are new to brainwave entrainment. Especially though, since it’s all free and open source and everything, it might be worth your while to figure Gnaural out. Now, I wonder where you can go to do that? Maybe it’s just one of those “practice makes perfectly possible” things.
But here’s a hint: Frequency Carrier Signal. And oh yeah, what is “binaural” anyway? Try this: binary + aural = binaural. Cool?
Okay, enough for now. Enjoy. Over and out.
(The writer's interests extend to TCM and Tai Ji, chaos magic and visualization-manifestation techniques, the adventures of Takeshi Kovacs, the broad overall spectrum of specific-to-general alternatives to negativity in the form of cynical optimism, and in a few minutes from this writing, a baking dish full of hot, toasted corn chips under melted sharp cheddar, salsa on the side.)
